


the war is in your head, the help is in my hands

by tigerlo



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Because these two want each other so much it's impossible not to include some, Character Study, F/F, I think you'd call this a Character Study?, Mention of Charity's past?, Vanessa Introspection, a little bit of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 20:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14196873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo
Summary: Vanessa hasn’t a clue how she ended up in Charity Dingle’s bed, shereallydoesn’t.And yet, here she is.Again.(Vanessa Introspection)





	the war is in your head, the help is in my hands

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, I think this takes place somewhere between the "I can't promise that I won't hurt you" kiss and their little post-gay club feelings declaration at the end of Feb. 
> 
> (I may well contradict that in the actual text of this fic so don't take that as gospel, as I think this could slot in pretty easily anywhere after the christening when they start sleeping together on a more regular basis.)
> 
> I'm sorry for any mistakes, they're all my own, and I'm clumsily throwing myself onto the Emmerdale bandwagon without having an actual twenty-year relationship with this soap so any canon-related/character mistakes or misgivings are my own too.
> 
> Lastly, before I leave you the heck alone to actually read this, thanks especially to three people; @piratekane for being brave enough to post her own vanity story a day ago which has driven this fic out of hiding, @heartsways for inspiring me _massivley_ with her own vanity fic, (and for giving me such a good crash course in these characters through it), but most importantly, @blurryoz for showing me the good sense to get wrapped up in this fun mess in the first place. 
> 
> x

-

 

Vanessa hasn’t a clue how she ended up in Charity Dingle’s bed, she _really_ doesn’t.

 

And yet, here she is.

 

Again.

 

After she had told herself the last time that she wouldn’t, that it _would_ be the last time, the _very_ last time.

 

Self-control is one thing it seems, but the might and will of Charity Dingle is something else entirely.

 

And it’s ridiculous really, because she’s a grown woman, and yet Charity reduces her to a smouldering heap with one passing comment, with one touch of her hand on Vanessa’s lower back when she’s working, flitting around punters at the pub.

 

With one bloody _look_.

 

But that’s it, Vanessa thinks, it’s attention in its simplest form, only attention, and Charity, for some divine reason, has seen fit to positively lather her in it.

 

And she knows it’s not always strictly _complementary_ , the attention, but it is, in a way, because it’s still attention, and as far as Vanessa knows, it’s attention she’s not giving anyone _else_ presently.

 

Despite what Charity says and how she acts and covers herself in a facade of ice, cool and fluid and untouchable, Vanessa doesn’t think there’s anyone else, she really doesn’t, and that in itself makes her heart do stupid somersaults in her chest, because Charity could, and she _has_ , but she doesn’t.

 

Vanessa would know.

 

Vanessa is _sure_ she would know.

 

Because there’s a continuity in the way that she touches Vanessa, in the way she allows Vanessa to touch her that tells Vanessa that she hasn’t had another in her bed in the time since Vanessa was there. Her pillows smell like Vanessa’s perfume, and Charity’s, fused in some exquisite harmony, and not the musk or sweet smell of another’s.

 

She knows what this town thinks of Charity’s past, and if she’s honest it’s a view she’s held herself at times, particularly after the mess with her father, but now, she’s not so sure.

 

Now, she’s not so certain.

 

She knows what everyone thinks of this thing between the two of them as well, that Charity is _used goods_ , that Vanessa could do so much better, that Charity’s only using her as a bed warmer until she can find someone else to swindle.

 

And Vanessa knows that her track record speaks to all of that, that Charity herself does too in those moments of rebellion where she pushes away the calm that’s settled between them so easily. But Vanessa doesn’t believe it. And even if she did, it doesn’t matter. She’d still be here. In Charity’s bed, trying to catch her breath while Charity’s hand draws lines up and down her inner thigh.  

 

It’s more than she’s ever anticipated one person could make another feel, Vanessa thinks, as she closes her eyes and bites back the sound threatening to fall from her lips.

 

“Don’t hide that moan from me, sunshine,” Charity purrs beside her, looking extremely pleased with herself for having elicited that kind of reaction from her, again.

 

“I don’t want to wake—“ Vanessa starts, but Charity is already kissing a messy path over her shoulder, along the line of bone.

 

“Well, you’d best come close so only I can hear it, hadn’t you?” Charity says, as though this is Vanessa’s problem, alone.

 

Because it is quite frankly. Because Vanessa knows Charity doesn’t have any qualms about being loud enough to alert the house to their actions, children or not — _they’ve gotta learn the way the world works sometime, babe._

 

No, she hasn’t before, and Vanessa doesn’t think some prudish hesitancy is about to lower itself over Charity Dingle about this, or anything else for that matter, any time soon.

 

There’s a selfishness to Charity that she had expected if she’s perfectly honest with herself, where her children are more hindrance in her life than hope, and Vanessa knows she should object, that she should try and turn Charity towards them —and she will in time, if Charity doesn’t push her away first— but for the moment she’s perfectly happy, more or less without guilt too, to accept Charity’s almost unbroken attention.

 

It’s _more_ than flattering actually. Because while half the village says they wouldn’t touch her with a pole, Vanessa knows they’d act differently when faced with a living, breathing, seduction-heaving Charity Dingle, standing in front of them with a glint in her eye. Vanessa thinks Charity could actually have anyone in the village if she wanted to, if she _really_ wanted to, and yet….

 

Vanessa knows she’s not the easy pick, because whether Charity has realised it or not, Vanessa hasn’t made the road to her bed as simple as she could have.

 

She’d given in quick enough, sure —she’s only human after all— but she had purposely challenged Charity, she’d stood up to her, she hadn’t been entirely the push over she might have been with someone else because she wanted to make sure, she wanted some assurance that Charity wanted this because she wanted _her_ , and not because it was easy.

 

Not because _Vanessa_ was easy.

 

She’d been pleasantly surprised at just how much Charity had chased her, had pursued her, had sparked something with a cheeky grin or loosely lobbed insinuation. How more often than not, Charity had been the fire starter, not her, laying a trail of ashes to her bed.

 

It’s not that Vanessa hadn’t wanted to be the one to initiate things between them, but she’d been worried maybe, that she would have been shrugged off or turned down because _I’ll be sick of you in a week or two_ hadn’t half-stung.

 

That, and she’d been curious to see if Charity would chase her.

 

And she had.

 

She’s on top of Vanessa now, a thigh pushing smoothly between her own, and she should be embarrassed by the heat between them, the wetness that she knows Charity can feel if the smug grin on her lips is anything to go by, but the truth is that she’s not.

 

It’s one thing Charity has never made her feel ashamed of, her own passion, how much Vanessa wants her. She teases Vanessa about it, but she’s never made her feel guilty, or like it’s anything but a fact to embrace with open arms.

 

Charity has one hand at Vanessa’s neck, her thumb pushing Vanessa’s chin up to she can drag her teeth along the tendon in her throat, her hand palming roughly at Vanessa’s breast when the first audible gasp breaks away through her clenched teeth.

 

“Careful, babe,” Charity says, breaking away from Vanessa’s neck with a dangerous glint in her eyes. “I thought you wanted to be quiet, yeah? Unless you want to give the kid a show? Teach him about the birds and bees nice and ear—“

 

It’s easier to silence that quick tongue than Vanessa had thought it would be, with an action, with something tangible. Normally a kiss, although sometimes she finds a scowl is just as effective.

 

(And Charity normally comes crawling with a guilty look of apology after those, something _else_ Vanessa has been surprised about.)

 

Charity responds best to actions, far more than words, she thinks because Charity can pick the lie easier in a touch than she can with silver lined sentiments: she’s long since learned how people use their bodies to lie.

 

She doesn’t mind though, if that’s the way she has to express her feelings for Charity. Falling into bed with her is far from a chore, after all.

 

It’s easier to tell Charity that she’s beautiful with a touch, with a lingering kiss. It’s easier to tell Charity she’s worth something with a soft promise down her stomach, her fingertips heavy and teasing.

 

It’s easier to tell Charity that she thinks she could be falling in love with her, without words at all.

 

Sometimes Vanessa wishes she could just _say_ something, though, that Charity wasn’t conditioned so deeply with this fight or flight mechanism to bolt like a spooked doe every time Vanessa says something kind, or gives her an indication that this thing between them —whatever the hell it _is_ — might be more than a fleeting fancy.

 

She’s better now than when this began, at least. When Vanessa had to pretend and act and play like this was meaningless to her. That she had to pretend like it didn’t cleave a piece of her heart off every time she left Charity in bed, or that she knew Charity wasn’t sleeping at all.

 

That it didn’t kill her to catch the pain Charity thought she hid so well in her eyes.

 

It’s different now though.

 

It’s different because Charity has a key to Tug Ghyll, one that may as well be the key to Vanessa’s heart for all that she’s fallen so helplessly for her. One she uses to such a regular extent that Vanessa’s almost forgotten what the bed feels like _without_ Charity beside her.

 

She tries to stay awake at night, until the time she knows Chas and Charity kick the last drunken stumbler out onto the cobbled street, she tries to stay awake to see Charity slip through the doorway, wincing at the creak of the hinge with an adorable wrinkle etched into her brow, because her tiredness the next day is always worth it for that, and the way Charity’s face softens so sweetly, just for a moment, when she sees Vanessa waiting up for her.

 

The nights that she falls asleep are almost as good though, because she wakes when Charity slips into bed with her, and it’s a kind of relief she didn’t even know was possible, feeling the mattress dip with her weight.

 

“Your feet are bloody freezing,” Vanessa grumbles each night as she pulls Charity’s arm over her waist, smiling despite herself.

 

“I know, it’s bloody freezing _out_ , so give me some of that heat, yeah,” Charity husks each night, pushing her warm chest against Vanessa’s back.

 

A bare leg will slide between hers and more often than not and they sleep that way, completely entwined, until one of them wakes early, thirsty for a brew or something else entirely.

 

There’s an intimacy within Charity that Vanessa hadn’t been expecting that settles around their bodies in the night, where Charity never pushes her away like she might have anticipated, she pulls her tighter to her, instead.

 

She presses a kiss to the curve of Vanessa’s shoulder blade when she thinks Vanessa has fallen asleep again, rubs her cheek against the warm skin and exhales _deep_.

 

Vanessa wishes the village would see her in those moments, softer than silk and so beautifully _normal,_ and it breaks her heart that Charity hides it away from everyone but her.

 

But Charity is careful, she holds on to anything that might be turned against her in an argument or a furore, and she’s opening herself slowly to Vanessa but she knows the damage hidden beneath Charity’s invisibly marred skin, her fierce self-protection, is constantly working against them both.

 

Charity’s scared, Vanessa knows she is, she’s scared of giving too much of a heart that’s been almost completely consumed by other people, and Vanessa doesn’t want to be one of those people, she doesn’t want to weaken Charity by taking more.

 

She wants to _give_.

 

Vanessa can’t offer Charity much, she knows this, nothing like previous partners have been able to, nothing shiny or expensive in the traditional sense, but there’s one thing she can that she doesn’t think anyone ever has before.

 

Kindness.

 

 _Softness_.

 

A safe place to lay her head.

 

Because she knows Charity has seen the darker side of the world, and Vanessa can’t reverse that, she can’t take that damage away, but she can give what she can, now.

 

She knows what others think of Charity’s past, what they’ve said behind her back and to her face, what Cain has said, the man who was supposed to have loved her, the man who Charity had given so much of her heart to, but it doesn’t matter to her, or rather it _does_ , but not in the sense that matters to everyone else.

 

Because she has seen a different side of Charity now, in her sleep in the small hours of the morning. When she cries. When she _comes_. She has seen a woman so battered by the world that it’s a miracle she can take herself from bed in the morning.

 

She’s seen the hurt that Charity never fully shakes when they come home from the bar and someone is idiotic enough to bring something from her past up. She hears the quiet _babe, don’t, it’s not worth it_ that Charity slips her from behind the bar when Vanessa’s hackles raise.

 

She knows Charity doesn’t want pity, and she doesn’t want to give her that, but she wants to do everything else, she wants to give Charity everything when she thinks others have only taken.

 

It makes her want to scream down the world when it comes knocking on her door in the morning after those nights, she wants to shut everything out for five bloody minutes and show Charity that there isn’t a weakness in being quiet, and soft, there’s a _strength_ in it.

 

That Vanessa doesn’t want her to soften so she can use it against her, she wants it because it’s what Charity deserves.

 

She has to be careful though, in how she gives affection to Charity, because she’s seen how quick her back comes up when she thinks it’s pity, or it’s insincere —which she thought it all was in the beginning, because gentility could only ever have been that, fake, not something genuine— but the truth is that she would give Charity everything if she asked, her whole heart, without hesitation.

 

In some ways, she thinks she already has.  

 

Letting someone like Charity Dingle into your life isn’t without risk, it isn’t without hazard, in fact she thinks almost everyone in this town warned her against it. Because letting someone like Charity see your belly, the softness and weakness of the flesh there, it’s a risk in itself, because she’s more than capable of putting an end to Vanessa at any time she wishes, with one quick fatal blow, but doing that, showing Charity the most vulnerable parts of her was the only way for Charity to see that Vanessa didn’t want anything other than _her_.

 

She wonders if Charity’s body trusted the kindness shown to it before Charity’s mind did.

 

Vanessa can see her watching some days, waiting maybe for Vanessa to run, or give signs of unhappiness, discontent, testing her always for fault, and it makes her furious that the world has been so cruel to Charity that she’s constantly waiting for disappointment. That her default is to distrust and distrust and distrust. Because that isn’t something one is born with, it’s conditioning.

 

She’s careful not to give too much then, to give enough that Charity thinks there’s falseness in her kisses. She drip feeds it slowly, gently increasing gradually over time, and it’s tragic that she has to temper her affection because she would give Charity everything, now, but she knows the price if she does.

 

There is a beautiful hope in Charity that Vanessa knows she doesn’t see in herself, the kind of hope only visible in the most damaged and broken souls.

 

Hope made from impossibility, from the purity of a beaten-down heart.

 

There are lips on hers now, insistent, commanding her attention, and she disrupts the thought to open her eyes to Charity

 

“I prefer someone’s attention on me when I’m in bed with them, yeah?” Charity breathes, nipping at Vanessa’s jaw as if to prove a point.

 

It’s incredible, how quickly Charity had unearthed the secrets of her body, how well she now knows every dip and rise of Vanessa’s pleasure, and she knows it was Charity’s job for years, that her life depended on it, but she’s fined tuned it to an almost enviable skill now.

 

Because Vanessa’s body is written to respond to Charity’s now, her voice and her kisses and her touch, like Pavlov’s bloody dogs when they’re in the same room together, but Vanessa hasn’t ever found it in herself to mind too greatly.

 

If she’s going to belong to anyone, it may as well be the woman in her bed who knows her better now than anyone else in the world.

 

“It is,” Vanessa sighs in reply to Charity’s earlier remark, and Charity frowns above her, until she explains. “My mind on you, that is. It’s on you. It’s always bloody on you.”

 

“That’s not a bad thing you know,” Charity preens, feathers ruffled by the remark, always taking the offensive, like it’s the only reaction she’s capable of.

 

“Did I say it was?” Vanessa replies with a hint of teasing.

 

Charity raises an eyebrow in faint amusement and Vanessa can’t help but smirk in reply, because Charity brings out a boldness in her that she’s never known before.

 

“I like it when you talk back,” Charity admits, palming Vanessa’s breast before lowering her head and taking a nipple between her lips.

 

Her sigh is louder this time, and Charity’s hand moves to her mouth, shutting the sound down, trapping it against her palm, smiling wickedly when she looks up to Vanessa.

 

“I like it when you do that, too,” Charity purrs, liquid fire in her eyes now. “Although I think that quiet thing is probably a good idea if you want to finish, babe. We’ll have someone at that door if you don’t.”

 

“Make me,” Vanessa breathes between Charity’s fingers, taking one of them between her teeth and Charity’s eyes flash hot.

 

“Or I could do the opposite,” Charity suggests innocently as her thigh presses up against Vanessa’s heavily. “I could try and get you to make enough noise to wake the whole bloody street. Do you think daddy would like that?”

 

Comments like that don’t make her bristle as they once did, and she’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad. She knows that Charity’s only trying to get a quick rise out of her now, because Charity loves Vanessa a little rougher than not.

 

She’s a terrible influence, Vanessa thinks as Charity kisses her hard, swallowing the groan when Charity’s hand replaces her thigh.

 

If only she could find it in herself to care.

 

Charity’s nails rake down her sides, leaving four neat lines like a lion's claws, and Vanessa could laugh because she’s never met anyone more animal than Charity, anyone more deserving of the mantle of lioness.

 

She’s never met anyone as savage, neither.

 

“ _Hush_ , Ness,” Charity snaps when half a moan escapes between Vanessa’s clenched teeth, her hand moving back to smother the sound. “So help me, if I have to stop before I get you off.”

 

“Easier said than done when you’re doing tha—“ Vanessa gasps when Charity pushes inside, driving all thought out of her mind.

 

This is what it’s like when they’re together, all-consuming, overwhelming, because Charity’s so _good_ there isn’t room for Vanessa to focus on anything but her.

 

Maybe that’s been her plan all along.

 

Maybe it’s all she’s ever wanted, for the person in her bed to be thinking of her, and not someone else. Not someone they’re using Charity in the place of.

 

“Charity, I—“ Vanessa sighs, feeling the mouth at her breast pause for a fraction of a second at the sound of her name, hers and not someone else’s, uttered in mistake.

 

Her lips find Vanessa’s again, her tongue hungry, and Vanessa recognises the kiss for what it is: Recognition. _Reward_.

 

So she says it again and again and again until her throat is rough because of it, and Charity’s kisses are honey against it.

 

It would be easy to say what she feels in these moments, _how_ she feels.

 

It would be easier to say _I love you_ than breathing.

 

She wonders what Charity would do.

 

She wonders if she would run.

 

She wonders if there will ever be a day when she _wouldn’t_.

 

Vanessa knows she does though, love her, love _Charity_ , and she’s prepared to be destroyed because of it, if that is to be the cost.

 

Charity’s fingers are quick, and nimble, and clever. Charity’s kisses are like gold, heavy and more valuable than blood.

 

Vanessa comes against her fingers, around them, _hard_ , gasping into Charity’s mouth, sighing her name over and over and wonders….

 

…. days, years, months….when she’ll have to pay up.

 

-

**Author's Note:**

> Charity Dingle now owns my heart and is an actual goddess (as is Vanessa Woodfield). That is all. 
> 
> Oh, actually, no it's not - I'd love to hear if you enjoyed this! I have a [tumblr](http://tigerlo.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi there too. And thanks for reading! 
> 
> x


End file.
